Pizza -- Daring Bakers Challenge October 2008

I felt guilty doing this month's Daring Bakers Challenge -- Peter Reinhart's method of making pizza. Why? Well, first, because I LOVE pizza and any excuse to make it is fine by me. (In fact, it was the subject of my very first post on this blog.) Second, making pizza at home is quite fun. And finally, I've made this particular pizza before, several times, with great success. If you're like me, and have failed to make good pizza for many years, finding a great recipe that produces a wonderful thin-crust pizza is a godsend. All those reasons are why making this pizza -- while fulfilling the challenge at the same time -- seemed like cheating.



The biggest roadblock I faced is that it's fall in Seattle, and a particularly cold one at that. It's fairly difficult to do anything with yeast when your room temperature is far below what it needs to be for optimal yeast activity.

But I managed to "cheat" even here. I used my homemade proofing box! It's basically just a styrofoam cooler with a hole cut out of the bottom, into which a 25-watt light bulb/socket is inserted. It's then flipped upside down over the cooler's lid (though a table or the floor would work fine), and an instant thermometer is inserted into the side. The light switch is one of those sliding kinds, so that I can change the brightness of the bulb to adjust the temperature inside the box (during colder months, it needs to be brighter to maintain the right temperature). The light bulb heats up the inside of the box so that it gets to a balmy 75-85°F -- the perfect environment for yeast to have a relaxing little vacation, encouraging them to multiply themselves. And best of all, I don't have to heat my entire house to do it. I got the instructions for fashioning one from Ed Wood's Classic Sourdoughs book. Since my home stays fairly cool even in the summer, I use it all the time.


Here's my proofing box, which is the key to my success with yeast-related baking.

I've been a fan of having broccoli as a pizza topping since I first discovered the Spinoccoli pizza at Uno Chicago Grill, which is, sadly for me, mostly on the east coast (and none in my state). It's a fairly rare topping, even at pizza establishments that have a wide range of other toppings. That makes making my own pizza even more worthwhile. The difficult part is that I prefer thin crust pizza, and broccoli's kind of heavy (Uno serves deep dish pizza). But hey, I like the challenge! The key to using broccoli on pizza is that you have to use raw broccoli (not frozen or cooked), because that, combined with an olive oil base, keeps it slightly crunchy and chewy -- which is what makes it delicious.


Broccoli, garlic, and mushroom pizza, fresh out of the oven.

This month's Daring Bakers Challenge required that we make a pizza with both sauce and toppings, and toss two pizza crusts the way Peter Reinhart describes in his book. I tried to take photos of me tossing the pizza, but it just didn't work out -- way too hard to capture on film when I'm just me in my kitchen. :-P I'm still a complete novice at it; I can successfully toss it a couple of inches, but no higher than that without compromising the integrity of the dough. I did stretch the pizza dough solely with my knuckles/hands -- no rolling pin -- so hopefully one day I'll be able to toss like a pro.

I suppose I could have made one pizza and simply tossed a second without fully dressing it, but why would I do that? So I made two pizzas. (I still really need to learn how to make pizza dough form a perfect circle. Mine always seem to come out rectangular.) First, of course, I made my favorite broccoli, garlic, and mushroom pizza.



For the second pizza, I decided to try a bit of an experiment.

If you happen to live in Washington like me, then you're likely lucky enough to have one of The Rock's locations at least within driving distance of you -- their pizzas are fabulous. I've always been intrigued by one of their appetizers, the "Brown Sugar Mozz Bread," which claims to be their garlic mozz bread sprinkled with brown sugar. I've never been there with anyone who really wanted to try it (to be fair, their pizzas are so large and delicious that ordering appetizers seems the height of gluttony), but I love sweet/salty combinations, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

The Rock describes their garlic mozz bread as: Our legendary dough, brushed with crushed garlic, extra virgin olive oil, pecorino romano AND topped with mozzarella then baked in our brick oven.

And the Brown Sugar Mozz Bread as: The same garlic mozz bread sprinkled with brown sugar, topped with mozzarella then baked in our brick oven.

Well, I was missing the brick oven, but creating a reasonable facsimile of their garlic bread seemed easy enough, and all I'd have to do was sprinkle it with brown sugar.


The garlic and brown sugar pizza, before being sliced.

Both pizzas were very tasty. I only used a modest amount of sugar, but it was enough for me -- the combination of flavors blended very well together. The only change I'd make the next time would be to take the garlic and brown sugar pizza out of the oven a minute or two sooner. I usually like browned cheese, but I think for this particular pizza you just want the cheese to melt and take it no further.


Here we have minced garlic soaking in olive oil, and broccoli that's been mixed with a bit of olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, along with some mushrooms, who are just there for the ride.

Recipes for dressing both pizzas are below. Both require that you make the pizza dough as described in Peter Reinhart's recipe, which can be found here. When you're ready to dress the pizza, here's what I did for each of mine.

Broccoli and Mushroom Pizza

I prepare the vegetables while the pizza dough is doing its 2-hour proof out of the fridge and while the oven is preheating so that I finish at about the same time the dough is ready to be tossed and shaped.

Ingredients:

• 2 oz fresh broccoli florets
• 2 oz fresh white button or cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• salt and pepper to taste
• red pepper flakes (optional)
• pizza sauce
• mozzarella cheese
• a hard cheese, like parmesan or pecorino romano (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to as high as it will go (mine caps at 500°F).
2. In a small bowl, combine broccoli, olive oil, and garlic until the olive oil is well distributed. Season as desired. (You can also add in the sliced mushrooms on this step if you like, but I usually leave mine unseasoned.)
3. Toss pizza dough and fashion into desired shape.
4. As directed in PR's method, I put the dough right on the peel so that it can be easily transferred from there (and I use a SuperPeel, to make it even easier).
5. Spread tomato-based pizza sauce over dough. Evenly distribute the broccoli and mushroom toppings onto the sauce. Sprinkle desired amount of mozzarella cheese over the vegetables, followed by the hard cheeses, if using.
6. Sprinkle semolina flour onto the baking stone just before you're going to put the pizza in.
7. Slide pizza onto the hot baking stone in a quick motion and close the oven.
8. Check pizza after 2 minutes and see if it needs to be rotated. It should take 5-8 minutes to bake.
9. Remove from the oven and wait a few minutes for the cheese and sauce to set a bit before slicing (makes it less messy). Serve and eat hot!

Brown Sugar and Mozzarella Pizza

Ingredients:

• 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• mozzarella cheese
• a hard cheese, like parmesan or pecorino romano (optional)

Method:

1. Combine garlic and olive oil in a small bowl and mix well. (This is probably a good place to use crushed garlic that comes in a jar, but since I didn't have any I minced mine.)
2. Toss pizza dough and fashion into desired shape.
3. Place the dough on a peel.
4. Using a pastry brush, brush dough with olive oil/garlic mixture. Be careful here, as the dough is thin and might tear with rough handling. Use as much or as little as you like. I usually use up all the garlic and enough oil to cover the surface area of the pizza.
5. Top with mozzarella and parmesan cheeses.
6. Using your fingers, lightly sprinkle brown sugar over the top of the cheese. Do your best to evenly distribute, but little pockets of brown sugar here and there isn't a bad thing.
7. Slide pizza onto the hot baking stone in a quick motion and close the oven.
8. Check pizza after 2 minutes and see if it needs to be rotated. It should take 5-8 minutes to fully bake.
9. Remove from the oven and wait a minute or two for the cheese to set a bit before slicing (makes it less messy). This one is especially important to serve and eat hot, as the sugar seems to make the cheese harden a bit more than usual when it cools.

A Tale of Yeast

This story actually begins over a decade ago, when my college roommate Emily and I were living in our first apartment. One day she decided that she would make a pizza from scratch. Never having witnessed such a thing -- or even contemplated that it could be done -- I watched the process from beginning to end, fascinated. The ball of dough rose overnight as if by magic, and it was then flattened out to a large square pizza, which was topped with cheese and veggies and promptly consumed once it was baked. It wasn't the best pizza ever created, and the crust was thicker than is my preference, but it was still good and the texture still resembled pizza. Plus we had it at a fraction of the cost of getting a 'real' pizza at BJ's down the street.

Not too long after this experience, while living on my own, I remembered Emily's pizza and the fun of making dough and waiting for it to rise, and how easy it was. I decided to make my own pizza, except with thinner crust. In my mind it was an easy thing: make dough, make pizza, eat pizza. But I ran into trouble almost right away. Why wasn't the yeast creating bubbles when mixed with water and a bit of sugar? Was the water I was using too warm? Were those few bubbles I did see from the yeast, or from me stirring? Was the yeast I'd gotten somehow defective? I plunged ahead anyway -- and the result was an inedible rock. But I was not to be deterred. I tried again, but this time I wanted to make sure that the dough had the right atmosphere to rise. It had seemed so easy and instantaneous when Emily had done it; what was I doing wrong? Maybe it was too cold where I was. So I stuck the rising dough in a warm oven ... too warm, as it turned out, as it ended up getting baked. I might have tried once or twice more, with less than ideal results, before giving up.

A few years later, my cousin and her husband had an adults-only get together where they served "gourmet" pizzas. Very thin crust, fancy toppings. I was interested to see whether their pizza dough would turn out well and truly pizza like. It did -- the pizzas were delicious. I was both disappointed and inspired. Disappointed, because it seemed that everyone could make pizza except for me, and inspired, because maybe, just maybe, if I used the recipe they had used, I could duplicate their results.

Failed. Again. The pizza I made was not thin, nor delicious. The crust more resembled a hardy bread than a good base for pizza. I decided that I was just a failure at pizza dough.

Then earlier this year, I read an article by Melissa Clark about a guy who had a successful pizza restaurant in New York, but prior to opening the restaurant had never made a pizza before. Now, of course, he was a pro. The article came with a recipe for his pizza dough, and I was inspired once more to give it a try. Surely as someone who hadn't grown up making pizzas and who had to teach himself the trade, his recipe would be more beginner friendly?

The pizza I made from this dough looked like a pizza aesthetically -- or a thicker breaded cousin of the pizza -- but taste wise it was severely lacking. I had followed the instructions precisely, and yet the results were as disappointing as they had been all the times before. No matter what, I could not get the dough thin enough to make it seem more like 'real' pizza. The dough was tough and chewy, and it was more like eating cardboard with some tomato sauce and cheese on top than eating pizza.

At this point you might wonder why I didn't just give up entirely, and simply buy my pizza. Oh, I did. Pizza can be had relatively inexpensively, and I'm a long way from my poor college days. But it always nagged at me that I had never once been successful at making pizza dough, which seemed like such an easy, simple thing. And I wasn't asking for perfection. If I couldn't make pizza like the pros, surely I could make passable pizza the way Emily had over 10 years ago?

I might not have tried again -- or it might have taken longer after the last failure -- had my best friend and I not gone to New York and discovered the wonder of New York pizza. A lot has already been said about New York pizza, all positive, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time extolling its virtues. I will just say that at first bite, while good, you may not notice the difference between a slice in New York and other pizzas you've had. You may not even notice it on the third bite, or fifteenth. But eventually you will realize: This is some damn good pizza. It's not fancy, it's not in your face; it's just something you want to eat. Constantly. In any case, we went to several pizza establishments while in the Big Apple and our favorite was Patsy's. Lombardi's was a close second, but Patsy's had won our hearts (at least for the two trips we've taken to New York). But really, you don't even need to go to a restaurant. We frequented Ray's plenty of times, and their slices were just as good if not as upscale with their ingredients. Perfect for just stopping by to grab a quick slice before heading back to our hotel room.

That said, we could not get New York pizza on the West Coast. While we have some pretty good pizza, it's just not the same. Not long after we got back from our second trip, I read an article in the New York Times about an ex-pat New Yorker who had moved down South somewhere, and it was his mission in life to duplicate Patsy's pizza in his home oven, nearly burning his house down while rigging his oven to make it get hot enough to bake true pizza, the way pizzerias are able to do. (He's able to bake a pizza in about 2 minutes.) Now this was pizza love. And I was particularly delighted by the fact that the pizza he was trying to duplicate was that of Patsy's, which was our favorite as well! His Web site gives a lot of advice on the process, and while I am nowhere near dedicated enough to go through all of them, one thing did stand out to me: He said to never use commercial yeast in the dough, but to get a sourdough starter. His came from Patsy's itself, but other starters could be made or purchased.

And suddenly it all fell into place. My enemy this whole time had been commercial yeast! (Okay, that's not true; if pressed now I could probably make decent pizza using it. But at the time I really thought I had figured out the source of all my pizza-making problems.) I ordered my first sourdough starter from www.sourdo.com (three actually), and now I have successfully baked my first sourdough loaf and made delicious pizzas besides.

It didn't happen by magic, though -- getting the sourdough cultures activated took a lot of time and patience (since they got contaminated during the initial process, which isn't uncommon, but it still takes days to "wash" the cultures and get them healthy again), and in the meanwhile I began reading up on yeast, fermentation, bread making, and other related topics. My wild yeast cultures have worked best for me, but that's also because I learned how to take care of them -- and I was much more diligent about it than I was with commercial yeast, which I could easily replace if something went wrong. I learned about gluten and how to get it to relax so it can be shaped more easily (enabling thin-crust pizzas). I learned about the best environment for yeast so they can thrive (enabling optimal volume expansion). I learned about temperature, steam, measuring by weight, and baking stones. In other words, I learned the science and the tricks to getting the results I wanted from yeast and from dough. While I am still far from being an expert, and I'm still constantly consulting books, at least I know the whys, which really helps with the hows. Now I can make pizzas that resemble pizzas!

And my days of "disobedient" yeast are over. First, I've converted to fresh sourdough for just about every baking need, though I haven't sworn off commercial yeast entirely (I know the day will come when I am too lazy to do the conversion between sourdough and commercial yeast in a recipe). Wild yeast is supposed to rise slower than commercial yeast, due to fewer yeast cells, but it's always worked like a charm for me, as long as I had the time to devote to it. Here's a picture of a sourdough starter I was keeping on my counter and feeding twice a day. At every feeding I'd discard all but about 10 grams of the starter, then add 40 grams of water and 40 grams of flour. This 90-gram mixture would sit at about where the tape-line measure is, and in 8-12 hours the yeast had eaten their fill of the flour, and expanded to nearly the top of the jar, easily more than 3 times its original volume.



Last night I was going through the final steps in baking my first successful sourdough without using a loaf pan (I'd tried once before, with so-so results), and the second-to-last proofing step, after two turns of the dough, required that I wait 4-5 hours for the dough to double in volume (from 2 cups to a full quart). It did, and then some. It actually exploded out of the plastic wrap that I'd put over the container.



I was delighted! The yeast was working overtime. This is a far cry from days of old, when my dough would barely inflate. The secret, I believe, is my proofing box (created from instructions in Ed Wood's book "Classic Sourdoughs"). In this box, the climate is always perfect for yeast to happily work away and be their most productive. This is particularly important for me, living in Seattle, where it rarely goes above 80°F even in the summer (as I'm typing this, it's around 63°F). Some bakers may need to worry about overheating, but not me. My concern is about getting it warm enough so that the yeast will be their most active. This might also be why performance from commercial yeast was lackluster in my kitchen; who knows how well my dough might have risen if only I'd had a proofing box during those attempts, where I could keep the temperature at a steady 80°F all the time?

I took the dough above and finished making the sourdough loaf (as per instructions from Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Bread Bible"), and it turned out beautifully. Not perfect -- I still have a ways to go -- but still beautiful to me.



Unfortunately while my baking skills have improved my camera skills haven't -- I couldn't get a good shot of the crumb (with lovely holes) and this was the best I could do, even with Photoshop's help. What these photos don't show is how soft and creamy the interior is -- even now I'm daydreaming of spreading some butter on a thick slice, or noshing on a big sandwich bookended with this bread.

Sourdough Pizza Crust

I have failed to make decent pizza crust for many years. After all this learning about sourdough, I was finally successful with a recipe I cobbled together from a simple one I found in various places online and a not-so-simple one from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.

This all came about because I had ripe sourdough starter (extra from feeding discard) that I didn't know what to do with. So I deliberately used a recipe that used sourdough starter instead of anything that required the addition of active dry/instant yeast. The online recipes seemed too simplistic (like the other recipes I've tried in the past that were failures) while the recipe from the book didn't use sourdough starter at all. So I just kind of combined the two to make them work for my purposes.

Ingredients:

• About 2 cups ripe sourdough starter (100% hydration), cold
• About 2 cups bread flour
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp salt

* If you can, weigh the ingredients and put the same amount of flour as you have starter. Adjust the amount of salt and oil accordingly.

Method:

1. 1. Mix all of the ingredients together in an electric mixer with the dough hook attachment for 5-7 minutes, until the dough is homogeneous and smooth (it will be sticky but not too wet).
2. Divide dough into 6-oz portions (every 6-oz portion will make a 9-12" pizza) or as big/small as you prefer. Discard leftover dough or make into grissini.
3. Lightly dust each portion. Gently shape into a ball. (At this point you can freeze them by lightly oiling each ball and putting them individually into freezer bags. Defrost the day before you intend to make the pizza.) Lightly oil dough balls and put them on a baking sheet (or smaller container depending on how many balls of dough you have). Cover and refrigerate overnight or for at least 8 hours.
4. Two hours before you plan to make the pizza, take the dough out of the fridge. Lightly flour your hands and press the dough down to a disc to about 1/2" inch thick and 5 inches in diameter. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and proof (leave it alone) for 2 hours.
5. About 45 minutes before you plan to bake the pizza, place a pizza stone on a lower third rack oven the oven and preheat to 500°F or as high as your oven will let you go (the higher the better, but most home ovens cap at 500 or 550).
6. After the 2-hour proof, dust your hands and put the disc of dough over your knuckles, using them to gently rotate and stretch the dough. If you're brave or feel comfortable, toss the pizza as the professionals do! The gluten should be relaxed (and yet developed enough) for you to be able to stretch it easily and it can get fairly thin without tearing. If it does tear, DO NOT RESHAPE (doing so will almost certainly make the dough too springy and "tough" and you'll have to wait another 5-20 minutes for the gluten to relax so you can try again). Simply pinch the hole closed with dough on either side.
7. When you have the dough shaped how you like it, transfer it to a peel. Top with sauce, cheese, and your choice of toppings (try not to overload, especially if it's a thin crust). In this order, I used Trader Joe's pizza sauce, basil leaves from my new homegrown plant, mozzarella cheese for melty goodness, and a 3-cheese blend of hard cheeses like parmesan, romano, and pecorino.
8. When the pizza is ready for the oven, sprinkle some semolina flour on the pizza stone, to make sure that the pizza will slide easily on (and more importantly, off). Use the peel and quickly slide the pizza onto the stone -- don't be too hesitant or it will just be messy.
9. Bake for 5-8 minutes, until cheese is bubbly and brown and the crust is golden. Use a peel to take the pizza off the stone (should be easy with the semolina base) and wait a few minutes for the cheese to set a bit before slicing.

The Pictorial

After the dough was proofed for 2 hours, it was stretched out to a shape kind of, sort of, resembling a pizza (sadly, I think this is the best I've ever done). I did it right on the pizza peel so that there would be less transferring back and forth.

Here I've put on the sauce and the toppings: tomato, basil, red onion, and garlic.

With the glorious addition of cheese: mozzarella and a "quatro formaggio" blend of parmesan, fontina, asiago, and soft provolone.

Here it's been slid onto a hot pizza stone (oven is at 500°F, which is the highest my oven will go) dusted with semolina flour.

8 minutes later.

3 minutes later. It's sitting on a plate way too small to hold it because it's the biggest plate I have. >.>

Hmm, okay, it might be TOO thin. Or the tomato slices were too heavy for how thin the crust was. Still, it was melty and delicious.

Close-up shot of how thin the crust is. Success at last! :-)